A man for all networks

Multiple exposure: viewers will be seeing a lot more of Shaun Micallef in 2003.

It may be the Chinese year of the goat but on TV it's the year of Shaun Micallef. Bring it on, writes Sacha Molitorisz.

In his silk tie and pinstripe suit, Shaun Micallef looks just like the lawyer he used to be, but he sounds like an off-duty drag queen. "I'm a woman, and I have large breasts," he says, cupping his hands in front of his chest for emphasis. "I confuse men with power and I threaten women who are seeking it ... or whose breasts are smaller."

It is September 2002 and Micallef is on the Melbourne set of his new ABC sitcom, Welcher & Welcher. Outside the weather is performing its usual chameleon act, while inside Micallef is performing a chameleon act of his own, switching between the roles of writer, producer and star.

"He wears a lot of hats in this one," says Nick Murray, who studied law with Micallef in Adelaide and is co-producing Welcher & Welcher, which, naturally enough, is set in a legal practice. "He's in there doing a performance, then we'll have a meeting about casting or budgets, then he'll be in the edit suite with Ted [Emery, the director]."

A lot of hats? A factory of milliners would struggle to keep up. In addition to his duties on what is arguably the most-anticipated local sitcom since The Games, Micallef has created and co-written a telemovie about cops for Ten and will host a variety show for Nine. The former, Blackjack, stars Colin Friels and Kate Beahan and is scheduled to air in March; the latter, Micallef Tonight, will be a weekly show in the mould of The Tonight Show with David Letterman and Rove Live. It will premiere in April, or thereabouts.

So, in the space of roughly three months, Micallef will deliver three very different programs for three very different networks: farce on the ABC, variety on Nine, drama on Ten. John Howard could do worse than to declare 2003 The Year of Shaun Micallef.");document.write("

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"It seems more of a feat than it is," Micallef says. "It's just that scheduling has aligned these things. Welcher was a long time in gestation, but then it was put to bed in early December. Blackjack was written by the middle of last year and was shot at the same time as Welcher. That's been put to bed, too. I've only got one gig this year, and that's with Channel Nine. I feel like my cup's full with only the one substance."

Hilary Innes, Nine's acting head of light entertainment, is delighted to hear it. One of the key executives behind Micallef Tonight, Innes first worked with Micallef on the 2001 Logies, seen by more than 2.4 million Australians. The post-Logie verdict was resounding: Micallef was a marvellous host.

"Very few people can host a variety show and even fewer can host an awards show," Innes says. "We've seen that with the Oscars, where even extremely talented people can fall flat on their faces. But the Logies was a really good experience. He walked on for a program where he had one of the biggest television audiences of the year and gauged what would and wouldn't work. I thought then, people get him. I think the exposure of the Logies was a turning point for him."

For Micallef Tonight, Micallef will need to demonstrate tremendous range, injecting off-the-cuff repartee into live interviews. "It's a completely different audience I'll be attempting to garner at Nine," he says. "For many people it'll probably be the first time they've ever seen me, and that's great. It gives me a whole new audience to bamboozle."

Innes has no doubts. "I've been in the business for 20 years and I think he is the most talented comedic host that I've come across," she says. "He's also a great writer and producer, so he offers a unique package."

Further, Innes says she doesn't mind sharing Micallef with other networks. "I actually think it'll work in our favour," she says. "Welcher is going to be on early in the ratings season, so it'll be an interesting lead-in for anything he's doing with us."

Welcher will also be a good lead-in for Blackjack, even if Micallef's role is purely behind the scenes. Micallef co-wrote the telemovie - his first foray into drama - with regular collaborator Gary McCaffrie; like Welcher, it was co-produced by Nick Murray.

"I had read the Blackjack script prior to coming to Ten," says Sue Masters, Ten's head of drama. "It avoided all the obvious cliches but was still a rattling good yarn. Until then I had only known Shaun and Gary for their comic strength, but was struck by how good their plotting was, and their characters were so rich and dimensional."

Masters is even more impressed with the finished product and a fortnight ago she commissioned three more instalments. Her hope is for an occasional series in the mould of Cracker or Halifax f.p.

"It is flattering to be asked to write something I'm not in," Micallef says. "It means I don't have to cover the deficiencies of the writing with my performance. And it's nice to know that I can branch off into writing if my performance career ends, though hopefully that won't happen in the next six months or so."

Committed to Nine, Micallef says he won't have time to write the next three episodes of Blackjack himself, though he hopes to assume a creative consultancy role with McCaffrie. "After all, we invented the thing."

Robyn Kershaw, the ABC's head of drama, says Australian audiences will be the winners out of Micallef's network-straddling efforts. "We understand [Micallef's] popularity," says Kershaw. "He has a very wide vocabulary as a creative artist so it's important he can express that. I wish he could express all that on the ABC, but there's no reason that Australians shouldn't be able to access that on another network."

Despite the importance of Micallef Tonight for Nine ("It's hugely important," admits Innes), Welcher probably represents the biggest gamble of Micallef's three new projects, simply because local sitcoms often struggle to find an audience. For every Mother and Son or Kath & Kim there are countless Flat Chats and Sit Down, Shut Ups.

"Whenever a new sitcom turns up questions are asked," Micallef says. "Such as, 'Why can't we make Australian sitcoms?' [New sitcoms] carry all these expectations."

"I think Shaun's probably broken a barrier, though," interjects Robyn Butler, Welcher's female lead. "Sitcoms are so difficult to get up, they go through such an arduous process with producers and script editors, production houses and networks - usually about four stages of development. The beauty of this is that because Shaun has some clout, he can say, 'I want to write a sitcom and I want to cast these people' and it can get made."

Welcher marks a significant departure from The Micallef Program/Programme/ Pogram, the ABC sketch show that wound up in 2001 after three series. "The sketch show was more playing around with language," Micallef says. "It was more postmodern, or deconstructionist. There's none of that in Welcher."

Shot over eight weeks in September and October, Welcher features dozens of scenes filmed on location, and more than 100 guest roles. "Hopefully what you'll end up getting is a really interesting sitcom the likes of which, in terms of construction, we haven't seen in Australia before."

So the budget was large?

"No," says Micallef.

"The locations are mostly at Shaun's place," Butler says.

"Because we're doing it for the ABC," Micallef says, "most of the actors ... soon realise they're not going to get any money out of it. It's like you're knocking on the door for a charity. You can usually go and shoot somewhere for about 10 cents and half a bottle of Coke."

The man in charge of the show is Ted Emery, who previously collaborated with Micallef on Full Frontal, The Big Gig and The Micallef Program. The pair work together easily. After shooting a take that is faithful to the script, they often reshoot with an eye to improvisation. This yields interesting results because so many of the cast are experienced at comedy.

"I think the good thing about this sitcom and the thing that hopefully distinguishes it from others in Australia is that it actually has funny people in it," Micallef says. "Everyone is funny. There have been a few [other sitcoms] that some might say haven't worked and I think part of the reason is that some of them have actors who are not comedians, whereas in America and England they wouldn't consider not hiring a comedian.

"And we're not infallible - we may well make mistakes. But generally I think at least everyone's making the one mistake - a huge one that we all believed in at the time - and I think people will respond to that. As in, 'Gee, that's a big miss, but at least they all fell over together'."

Innes can't wait, even if she has to switch over from Nine to see it. "I wouldn't miss it," she says.

Welcher & Welcher begins on the ABC on Thursday at 8.30pm.

Welcher & Welcher: the verdict

The bad news is it starts awkwardly. Mistimed punchlines leave jokes falling flat, the wordy script makes the narrative cumbersome and cluttered, and the characters are not immediately likeable or engaging. Some scenes are too obvious, some too subtle.

Fortunately, about halfway through episode one, Welcher slips into gear. Suddenly the pace is quick and the wit is sharp. The interplay between the pompous lawyer Quentin Welcher (Micallef) and his good-samaritan wife (Robyn Butler) is engaging; Francis Greenslade's character, a low-life sleaze, is hilarious; and the machinations of the Welcher & Welcher practice - with bumbling painters, anguished articled clerks and an incompetent IT expert (Santo Cilauro) - are oddly plausible.

Episode two is even stronger, ending in a rib-splitting scene in which Quentin thinks he's about to get lucky. He isn't, but we are: only a few patchy sequences dampen a consistently strong first series.

Here's more good news: Welcher is character-driven and plot-driven, more in the mould of British classics such as Fawlty Towers (probably inevitable in a sitcom that revolves around a tall man with a penchant for pratfalls and absurdity) than US shows such as Everybody Loves Raymond. Micallef himself describes it as farce. Combining slapstick, clever one-liners and absurd situations, it is much less weird than fans of the third series of The Micallef Pogram might expect.